KULeuven Lecture Series: Thinking with Microbes by Kristien Hens

Thinking with Microbes
What can we learn from thinking with microbes about ourselves, about life, health, sex and death? Microbial life, vast, diverse and largely invisible unsettles familiar concepts such as individuality and agency. What does it mean that humans can be conceived of as multispecies collectives, shaped by billions of microbial partners that influence mood and behaviour. How do microbes themselves challenge human exceptionalism and rigid biological categories? In this talk I show how microbial perspectives open new ways of understanding identity, kinship, vulnerability, and care, from the ethics of microbiome interventions to broader cultural questions about what it means to live well together. Thinking with microbes ultimately invites us to reimagine health not as control over biological processes, but as participation in dynamic, interdependent systems.

Kristien Hens
Kristien Hens is full professor at the department of philosophy at the University of Antwerp. She researches environmental ethics, with a focus on Japanese philosophy. She is interested in all creatures across kingdoms and domains. She teaches bioethics, media ethics and Japanese environmental philosophy. She wrote Denken met Microben (Letterwerk, 2025), Chance Encounters. A Bioethics for a Damaged Planet (Open Book Publishers, 2022) and Towards an Ethics of Autism (Open Book Publishers, 2021).

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